New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1887-04-20
Educational.

It is almost q universal practice with
teachers to subject all their pupils to the
same methods Of instruction, and this
without any other apparent reason than
the adaptation of these methods to a
majority Of their pupils. In other
words if a method of instruction is
found to be successful with q greater
| portion of class of reasonably bright
boys and girls of which majority of
! almost any school will be found to con-
sist, it is applied vigorously to the whole
class if not to the whole school.
Now it very often happens that the
boy whose intellect fails to be reached
! by this majority method is the real ge-
MUS, the one who has faculties which if
properly trained would place him head
and shoulders above the rest of his class
and it always happens that a child is
especially adapted to some course of
training which, if.given him, will enable
life.
Many boy has been through school
and had his intellect SO warped by inn
proper training that his own soul can
hardly recognize it. He leaves college
with ALB. or LID. attached to his
name perhaps, and plunges into some
trade or profession that his father or
some boyish fancy has selected for him,
but finds after q hard and better fight
with adverse circumstances that he is
untitled for his calling and trys another
and another and continues trying till at
last he finds he has made failure of
life and gives up discouraged, as moth
ing else can discourage, often ending
his life in an igronimous death. Thou
sands of as brilliant men as ever sat in
the halls of Congress or graced our
country's benches and pulpits have
made such failures because of the mis-
understanding and mistraining Of their
faculties, and thousands more have on
~ realized partial success for the same
reason.
One great object of education is to so
train the mind that when the student
enters the arena of active life he will be
prepared to successfully cope with the
many difficulties he is sure to meet, and
make the best use of his natural endow-
ments. smother is to develop to it's ut
most capacity for the enjoyment of the
intellectual life. And there is no doubt
that, under Il system of instruction
which would apply methods especially
adapted to an individual mind to that
mind and not Unfortunately to all, u
system that would develop the natural
bent of the mind if it has any useful
tendency, the faculties of the mind
would be brought to the highest degree
OF perfection and would be attended by
for hot fo IN &t,o
they are under the present system.
The laws regulating the development
of the mind are as immutable as any of
the laws Of nature and it is. only when
we conform to them that we attain full
intellectual growth. Blindlv stuffing
the brains of a child with 4 promiscous
mass of sciences and abstract rules
without regard to these laws is as hurt
full as it is unreasonable.
course OF training that would be
necessary for good physician or the
president of a college would almost Mt
terly disqualify 4 man for successful
farming and vice versa, while the train
ing OF 81 dozen of our best colleges would
be worse than wasted in the attempt to
make 4 professional man out of one
who has no natural fitness for snything
but oXdriving. A child whose talents
are especially fitted for any trade or
profession should be educated with that
in view and not have its mind warped
and dwarfed by studies and methods
entirely foreign to its nature and which
it can neither properly digest nor as
simulate.
JERRY DYLLoBY.